France pushes for €60B in new EU taxes for next budget

BRUSSELS — France said new EU-wide taxes should generate over €60 billion toward the bloc's next seven-year budget, according to three EU diplomats, granted anonymity to about closed-door talks.

Paris has emerged as the main supporter of new levies, known as own resources, insisting they will generate more revenue to spend on EU priorities such as defense and competitiveness, and reduce national contributions to Brussels.

Securing Paris’ backing is crucial to obtain agreement among governments on a budget proposal by the end of the year, before elections in France, Italy, Poland and Spain in 2027 threaten to derail the talks.

There are lingering concerns that a bad budget deal for France could boost the far-right National Rally, which is ahead in the polls and has campaigned to halve Paris’ contributions to the EU budget.

During a closed-door discussion on Tuesday, France’s ambassador to the EU, Philippe Léglise-Costa, told colleagues that new EU-wide levies should generate over €60 billion — a high threshold for most other countries, according to the diplomats, who have direct knowledge of the talks. None of the other countries specified how much money they want to generate through the new taxes.

While most governments support introducing new own resources, they have misgivings about the specific ideas on the table.

The European Commission’s proposal from last July envisaged five new levies that would generate up to €66 billion in extra revenue. But the package has been met with resistance from national governments.

The Irish Council presidency, which is steering discussions on the next Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF), aims to narrow down the number of own resources that are acceptable for EU countries during a leaders’ summit in Brussels on Oct. 15.

Dublin on Monday hailed “consensus” among governments to introduce new levies on foreign polluters, known as the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), and electronic waste that could respectively generate €1.64 billion and €17.9 billion per year on average from 2028 to 2034.

During Tuesday's discussion, the Commission opened the door to tweaking some of the tax proposals to generate more revenue than initially foreseen, one of the diplomats said.

But in a significant blow for France, other tax proposals — targeting tobacco products, corporate turnover and revenues from the Emissions Trading Scheme — have faced opposition from several countries, according to a note from Ireland seen by POLITICO.